A common refrain by anti-tax advocates, is that the rich pay too many taxes, and the poor not enough. Often they complain that if there weren’t so many social programs, our taxes would be much lower.

Furthermore, there seems to be no connection, between their rhetoric about social programs, and the percentage that we actually spend on social programs.

But as someone on my forum pointed out, there is no direct relationship between what we spend on social programs (or spend in general), and what we pay in taxes.

Whether we spend more or less on social programs, or anything else, there is no guarantee that our taxes will go up or down. We don’t tie our taxes to our budget. Far from it.

I thought that this was poignant.